Marburger on human spaceflight

By Jeff Foust on 2004 June 19 at 12:54 pm ET

John Marburger, the President’s science advisor, was the luncheon speaker Tuesday during NASA’s Centennial Challenges workshop in Washington. During his talk he touched upon the rationale for sending humans into space, and had some interesting comments:

We’re pretty sobered by the Columbia experience and the Challenger experience. They made it clear that we have to have a darn good reason to put humans up there… Governments do have a responsibility to protect people from dangers that they might not fully understand.

While Marburger didn’t explicitly mention private human spaceflight in that passage, the implication that a number of people in the audience (which had a number of representatives of the “alt.space” community) got was that Marburger wasn’t terribly fond of space tourism. I don’t know if that’s a fair assessment (or if Marburger has even given any thought to it), but that was the impression he left.

Remember, going into space is not about science. It may be rationalized to be about science, but it isn’t about science. It is about politics, keeping money flowing into a specific state or congressional district or contractor,making a specific Senator or Congressman look good doing something for the constituents in the home district, and that’s it. No “for the betterment of mankind”, no to open a new frontier for the masses, no to advance science”, nothing like that.

In particular space is not about (as NASA management or government officials in general who are concerned about science)getting the common man or woman into space for any reason anytime soon, it is just “too dangerous to be left to amateurs” and not a good enough reason to be risking human life,or spending money on space in general. As the U.S.Government sees it at least.

I did not have the opportunity to attend Dr. Marburger’s luncheon speech, but I think the attendees are mishearing his intent.

One of the most important findings of the CAIB was that the federal government simply flying astronauts around Earth orbit without a clear and powerful and agreed-on rationale. Spending treasure and blood as a public sector activity has to be a politically defensible activity, since public funds are being used.

According to several published and private accounts, it was this challenge that led to the new Vision for Space Exploration: giving the American people a reason to keep sending astronauts and scientists (as well as robotic explorers) into space.

I expect Dr. Marburger was simply saying that sending people into space just to send them into space isn’t an enduringly valid (i.e. politically sustainable) reason for the government to fly astronauts.

THIS HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH COMMERCIAL HUMAN SPACE FLIGHT.

I can speak from direct personal experience that Dr. Marburger and his senior staff are extremely supportive of commercial human spaceflight activities.

My colleagues in the alt.space community may simply have been listening to a scientist with a jaundiced ear based on what scientists tend to think. But Dr. Marburger is not just any scientist. He is a scientific advisor to a President. He understands — and agrees with — the President’s desire for America — including American citizens — to lead humanity into the space frontier.

Somebody who attended the Centennial Challenges workshop mentioned that the guy from NASAWatchInfo was there and spoke repeatedly. The problem was that almost everything he said was an insult. Apparently he doesn’t like NASA…

That would be Rich Robins, and, yes, he was at the Centennial Challenges workshop and asked a number of questions that were sometimes diatribes against NASA or big aerospace. Rich is something of a… gadfly, showing up at a number of space events in the DC area, and for whatever reason has decided to take Keith Cowing and NASA Watch (.com) to task for just about anything.

“There should be some mechanism to protect the space tourism industry from shoddy operators and Hindenburg-like disasters that ruin the reputation of the entire industry.

The media is being positive to the X PRIZE and SpaceShipOne, but they will turn against space tourism once a disaster happens.”

What mechanism are you talking about?

There is going to be an accident at some point, no doubt about that, so if you’re suggesting that the industry be made zero-risk then you are suggesting that the industry close its doors immediately.

I can’t imagine that would be what you are suggesting, but I also can’t think of any other way either to make sure there is never a disaster or to make sure that the public has a particular acceptable reaction to a disaster. Please clarify.